T-shirt inappropriate for work?

Manxman_in_exile

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

Oh - I see.  So you are "one of those" people...

Manxman_in_exile

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

Well said.  I used to try to follow the mantra of one of my directors to "work smarter not harder".  Normally I would have viewed that sort of homily as meaningless empty claptrap - but actually he was right.  It always amused me to see people "working harder" but not achieving any perceivable benefit from doing so.

Of course, if it is impossible to complete allocated tasks with the resources available, that is a problem for management to sort out, as you say.  (Although a lot of the time I think it's a "not working smarter" problem too).

Manxman_in_exile

Dakta said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

I see your point. I used to do this amongst other workaholic traits for a variety of reasons, some I can explain, some are a bit of a mystery even to me. Ultimately there was a bit of a sense of duty, and also there was the need to support others, every problem we don't solve is a problem someone else has to face and due to a few reasons there was a shortage of confidence ...

[Edited to shorten quote]

...I an not dismissing your points, but I do think it depends on the person. Whilst I wouldn't want to lose my 'I will make myself available when and where needed' work ethic I do actually think, despite the adjustment which has been quite horrible its a healthier way of working.  Just my 2p as I think you do need to be able to stop or get that work divide. So I'm more agreeing than disagreeing but ignoring the phone for example or the email when you know theres stuff to deal with can be a bit stressy in its own right.

I think you are right - it's largely a personality thing.  But you are fortunate if being in a different role has given you an opportunity to find a more healthy approach to work than your previous "workaholic" approach and to be more self-aware of your own traits.  Ironically I used to work for a NHS mental health trust and I saw several people end up on the scrap heap because they didn't know when to stop getting involved and their managers didn't help.

My managers were always very good and I remember one in the early days giving me a good talking to because he thought I was trying to take on to much.  He told me to stop over-valuing my own contribution by thinking I was the only person who could do things or solve problems, and to remember that none of us were indispensable.  (And I think he was suggesting I was the least indispensable of any of them!).  As he said to me:  "What do we do if you get hit by a bus on the way home tonight?  Simple - we carry on as we did before you worked here and somebody else does your job".

If you aren't actually on duty or if you aren't actually on call, work should not be in your head.  It's a bad thing not a good thing.

Apologies to everybody for straying so far off topic.  Hold on - maybe I should have gone into work the next day wearing a T-shirt with the logo:  "WAIT TILL I GET HIT BY BUS!  THEN YOU'LL SEE!!"

cymruchris

Maybe the OP has a T-shirt fetish - and a fetish that involves provoking arguments in a public forum using the same topic since 2014. You'd have thought that if it happened to be one and the same as has been suggested, that the person involved might have matured a little by now. But then as has been pointed out, maybe the OP is just out for a bit of attention and 5 minutes of internet fame. 

TELLIT01

Manxman_in_exile said:

TELLIT01 said:

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

Well said.  I used to try to follow the mantra of one of my directors to "work smarter not harder".  Normally I would have viewed that sort of homily as meaningless empty claptrap - but actually he was right.  It always amused me to see people "working harder" but not achieving any perceivable benefit from doing so.

Of course, if it is impossible to complete allocated tasks with the resources available, that is a problem for management to sort out, as you say.  (Although a lot of the time I think it's a "not working smarter" problem too).

Totally agree about the 'work smarter, not harder'.  There was a massive restructuring at one place I worked following the merger of two companies.  I managed one of nine regional IT infrastructure support teams.  Some months after the restructure I had a one-to-one with our boss where it was mentioned that I wasn't doing as many hours overtime as some other managers.  I asked what wasn't being achieved in my area that was being achieved elsewhere?  My manager seemed surprised by the question but admitted that we achieved as much as the other teams.  I then suggested that maybe the problem was more with the way other teams operated than the way my team did.  There was actually one team manager who wanted to be involved in everything and wouldn't delegate.  He even took his work phone when he went on holiday abroad and insisted that he was informed of any issues - despite the fact that there would be absolutely nothing he could do.  My way of working was the complete opposite.  Delegate work to people where possible, not to get out of the work but to develop their abilities.  I would still be available if needed, but trusted that my team members would let me know if there was a situation they couldn't deal with.

What I did find interesting though was that after I left, the overall manager insisted that my team work in the same way as all the others, despite the fact that our system had worked well for 4 years.  My team had no leavers during that 4 year period, and a number left in the following months.

MattMattMattUK

Manxman_in_exile said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

Well said.  I used to try to follow the mantra of one of my directors to "work smarter not harder".  Normally I would have viewed that sort of homily as meaningless empty claptrap - but actually he was right.  It always amused me to see people "working harder" but not achieving any perceivable benefit from doing so.

Of course, if it is impossible to complete allocated tasks with the resources available, that is a problem for management to sort out, as you say.  (Although a lot of the time I think it's a "not working smarter" problem too).

The only problem with working smarter is that I have been in several roles where I worked smarter, building and deploying new systems and processes, which in some cases more than halved the workload. Other staff then resented that they were give "more" work, even though their overall working requirements had been reduced. Bosses got annoyed that they looked like muppets for having had poor systems and processes for years. The other was that I was almost always given/assigned more work that everyone else, because "Matt will find a way to do it quicker/easier". 

74jax

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

I completely agree - now.....  But until this time last year (to the week actually) I was in the other camp. 

I took my laptop on holiday, answered emails on an evening, caught up on weekends, I enjoyed it. Yep ENJOYED it....... Or so I thought. 

Had it slowly become a habit, who knows.

As there was only me who did my job, after time off, I had to catch up. It was easier to try and keep on top when away. 

Enter a pandemic..... Mam died of covid (in the middle of lockdown 1). We couldn't see mam, no funerals were allowed, morgue was full, I had to tell my daughter her nana died on the phone, I couldn't see my brother..... And there was my boss - who I had the upmost respect for - on the end of a phone 'I need this, I need that, yes I know she's just died I still need you to work at 110%'. And 1 hour later after that call, at about 7.30pm in went my notice. 

I look back and don't recognise my old self. I look at others who are like how I was, and see the signs - 'I'll just do this, I must do that, there's only me to do it'..... 

Manxman_in_exile

74jax said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

I completely agree - now.....  But until this time last year (to the week actually) I was in the other camp. 

I took my laptop on holiday, answered emails on an evening, caught up on weekends, I enjoyed it. Yep ENJOYED it....... Or so I thought. 

Had it slowly become a habit, who knows.

As there was only me who did my job, after time off, I had to catch up. It was easier to try and keep on top when away. 

Enter a pandemic..... Mam died of covid (in the middle of lockdown 1). We couldn't see mam, no funerals were allowed, morgue was full, I had to tell my daughter her nana died on the phone, I couldn't see my brother..... And there was my boss - who I had the upmost respect for - on the end of a phone 'I need this, I need that, yes I know she's just died I still need you to work at 110%'. And 1 hour later after that call, at about 7.30pm in went my notice. 

I look back and don't recognise my old self. I look at others who are like how I was, and see the signs - 'I'll just do this, I must do that, there's only me to do it'..... 

My wife used to be like that too.  But she took flexible retirement a few years ago and one of the conditions was that she step down a grade.  She also decided to work only three days a week.

She now enjoys her job (and her home life!) a lot more than she used to, but now that she's in her early 60s she really regrets the amount of time and just "life" that she'd allowed to be wasted because "I have to do that... no-one else can do it... I need to help them because they don't know... etc etc".  She was basically being over-conscientious and over-diligent with no discernible additional benefit to anyone (including herself, her employer, and me).

I think it's sometimes a bit of an ego thing too, and the mistaken idea that you are more vital and indispensable to the operation than you actually are.  And/or you are unlucky enough to work for an employer who is more than happy to exploit those normally admirable personality traits in an unfair fashion.

Oh well - back to the T-shirt troll... 

Jack_bauer24

UPDATE: I just started back the cleaning today at the place where I got told to remove my t-shirt - I got told this job will last until at least January, but I have contacted agency and they have told me that they not to sure, just got told to just keep coming in until I get told otherwise. 

This time, I am working from 9am - 5pm - Monday to Friday just cleaning touchpoints every hour and then just chill till next time I clean them. This job has come at the right time as when this £20 extra a week ends on Universal Credit, I will be struggling so I am glad I get paid weekly. 

Also, I am wearing a work (not mentioning the company) logo t-shirt since they have given me another chance. 

Dakta

That was very good of them